"Ha, ha, ho, ho!" laughed the gory and bearded pirate.
"Save me!" cried Mary Matilda. "My beechnuts are all gone!"
"Throw them the baby!" answered the bearded pirate, "and save yourself! Ha, ha, ho, ho!"
Should she do it? Should she throw little Bessie to the devouring musquashes? No, she could not stoop to that ungenerous deed.
"No, base pirate!" she cried. "I would not so demean myself!"
But the scuttled brigantine had disappeared. Mary Matilda saw it was a mirage. Meanwhile the musquashes gained on her. The beechnuts had whetted their appetite. It seemed as if they were sure of their prey. But all at once they stopped, and Mary Matilda stopped, too. They were confronted by a haggard but manly form. It was the mysterious young stranger, and he had a saw which Eddie Martin had lent him. His aspect was so terrible that the musquashes turned to flee, but they were too late. The mysterious stranger laid about him so vigorously with his saw that the musquashes soon were in bits. Here was a tail, there a leg; here an ear, there a nose—oh, it was a rare potpourri, I can tell you! Finally the musquashes all were dead.
"To whom am I indebted for my salvation?" inquired Mary Matilda, blushing deeply.
"Alas, I do not know," replied the wan stranger. "I am called Juan, but my lineage is enveloped in gloom."
At once Mary Matilda suspected he was her brother's missing friend, and this suspicion was confirmed by the lavender trousers he wore. She questioned him closely, and he told her all. Bessie heard all he said, and she could tell you more particularly than I can about it. I only know that Juan confessed that, having tasted of Mary Matilda's cake, he fell deeply in love with her and had come all this distance to ask her to be his, indissolubly.